...Hui-Fen Hsu The Heroic Pattern in Life of Pi 95 The Heroic Pattern in Life of Pi Hui-Fen Hsu Applied English Department National Taichung University of Science and Technology Lecturer Abstract This paper examines the universal structure of a mythological hero’s adventure in Life of Pi. The theory is based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which illustrated and distilled heroic patterns from various cultures. The hero’s journey has three stages: separation, initiation, and return. Answering a call to adventure, the hero departs from his familiar world and ventures into a region of supernatural wonder. Miraculous forces are encountered there and a decisive victory is won. He then returns from this mysterious land, bringing an elixir to bene¿t his fellow men. Through this journey of trials, the hero transforms his former self and achieves spiritual growth. Such heroes range from monster slayers to spiritual leaders such as the Buddha and Christ. Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel about an Indian boy who survives a shipwreck by drifting on a lifeboat with a tiger. His adventure ¿ts Joseph Campbell’s hero archetype. Similar to the mythological hero, Pi departs from his familiar land of India, answering the call for adventure to a new country. Protected by the supernatural powers of Hinduism, Catholicism, and Islam, he penetrates the dangerous and mysterious realm of the Pacific Ocean. After experiencing harsh ordeals, he returns...
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...decisions and actions. The importance of honor is seen in Odysseus’s reaction to a bard’s recalling of the trickery at Troy that allowed him to sack the city. This story of Odysseus’s success is not just a story of roses, but a story of “the grimmest fight/ he had ever braved” (Book 8 lines 582-583). This description of the battle strongly contrasts the common characterization of this clash as wonderful success for Odysseus. Directly following the aforementioned characterization of the battle “great Odysseus melted into tears”. Surprisingly Odysseus is not rejoicing in tales of his victory, but grieving. Odysseus grieving rather than enjoying tales of his cunning and strength express that a hero must not only have “builds, brain, and flowing speech” (book line 194), but must have a fourth characteristic – honor. In the description of Odysseus’s crying from book eight lines 588 - 595 the Odyssey displays honor’s importance to a hero: as a woman weeps, her arms flung around her darling husband, a man who fell in battle, fighting for town and townsmen, trying to beat day of doom from home and children. Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath, she clings for dear life, screams and shrills – but the victors, just behind her, digging spear-butts into her back and shoulders, drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labor, pain, This vivid description compares the powerful hero Odysseus to a helpless woman with no husband to protect her. Importantly, the man being wept over “fell...
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...is an ordinary human who is wounded but still fighting hard. They never give up. To illustrate what a hero looks like there are some characteristics of a hero and what they should be. The image that comes to most people’s minds when they think the word hero is superman or a red cape but we find hero’s in everyday life. Heroes are at your school at your job, even in your community. Heroes could be the firefighters at the...
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...the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in about 2750 BCE. In the epic, he has an intimate friend, Enkidu, a naked wild man who has been civilized through the erotic arts of a temple priestess. With him Gilgamesh battles monsters, and when Enkidu dies, he is inconsolable. He sets out on a desperate journey to find the one man who can tell him how to escape death. Part of the fascination of Gilgamesh is that, like any great work of literature, it has much to tell us about ourselves. In giving voice to grief and the fear of death, perhaps more powerfully than any book written after it, in portraying love and vulnerability and the quest for wisdom, it has become a personal testimony for millions of readers in dozens of languages. But it also has a particular relevance in today's world, with its polarized fundamentalisms, each side fervently believing in its own righteousness, each on a crusade, or jihad, against what it perceives as an evil enemy. The hero of this epic is an antihero, a superman (a superpower, one might say) who doesn't know the difference between strength and arrogance. By preemptively attacking a monster, he brings on himself a disaster that can only be overcome by an agonizing journey, a quest that results in wisdom by proving its own futility. The epic has an extraordinarily sophisticated moral intelligence. In its emphasis on balance and in its refusal to side with either hero or...
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...English 12 January 2, 2013 Forever: An Overly Sexual Abomination or Coming of Age Novel? The first amendment of the Constitution has given every American citizen the right practice freedom of speech. Yet and still, it seems that literary censorship, which is “the act of changing or suppressing speech or writing that is considered subversive of the common good,” (Merriam-Webster, 2012) has been more prevalent in the past 100 years than ever before. People all around the country have been affected by the parameters of censorship. Author Judy Blume once said when asked her opinion about it the topic, “It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” (NMSU Library, n.d.). Blume, herself, is no stranger to censorship. Several of her writings have made ALA’s list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books. Her 1975 novel Forever was both challenged and banned in over 10 different states because of its descriptively sexual content, disobedience to parents, “lack of moral tone,” and use of profanity (Censorship & Judy Blume, n.d.). Forever is the story of two high school seniors, Katherine and Michael, and their journey throughout their relationship. The teens meet at a party and fall in love from there. Eventually, Katherine loses her virginity to Michael and they promise each other that they will last “forever...
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...Title: Sweet Dreams Topic: Dreams General Purpose: To inform Specific Purpose: By the end of my speech, my audience will have a greater understanding of dreams. Introduction I. Attention-getting device: Did you know that we spend an average of six years of our lives dreaming? (Dream Moods, Inc., 2010) II. Relevance to the audience: Even though some of us may not remember our dreams, everyone dreams! III. Ethos: I personally am one of those people who rarely remember their dreams, but the study of dreams is something that has always intrigued me. IV. Central idea: Dreams are an important topic because everyone dreams. V. Preview of main points: Today I would like to share some information with you about the history, types, and interpretations of dreams. Transition: First of all I am going to briefly define dreams and tell you a bit about their history. Body I. A dream can be defined many different ways, but according to Webster’s dictionary a dream is a series of thoughts, images or emotions occurring during sleep. (Merriam-Webster, 2011) a. The first recorded dream dates back to seventh century BC and was also the first recorded story: The Chronicle of Gilgamesh. A story about “the hero’s journey,” which was recorded on clay tablets in Assyria. b. In the era of the Old Testament God spoke to humans by way of dreams. For example, Daniel ‘s dream interpretation saved him for death in the lion’s den. c. In ancient Greece the study of dreams becomes more complex and...
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...The Transformation of Gilgamesh in the Epic of Gilgamesh In many literary works we see significant transitions in the hero's character as the story is developed. This is also true in the Epic of Gilgamesh with its hero, Gilgamesh. In this narrative poem, we get glimpses of who Gilgamesh is and what his purposes and goals are. We see Gilgamesh act in many different ways -- as an overbearing ruler resented by his people, a courageous and strong fighter, a deflated, depressed man, and finally as a man who seems content with what he's accomplished. Through all of these transitions, we see Gilgamesh's attitude toward life change. The goals he has for his own life alter dramatically, and it is in these goals that we see Gilgamesh's transition from being a shallow, ruthless ruler to being an introspective, content man. The epic begins with the men of Uruk describing Gilgamesh as an overly aggressive ruler. "'Gilgamesh leaves no son to his father; day and night his outrageousness continues unrestrained; And he is the shepherd of Uruk, the enclosure; He is their shepherd, and yet he oppresses them. Strong, handsome, and wise. . . Gilgamesh leaves no virgin to her lover.'"(p.18, Line 23-27) The citizens respect him, but they resent his sexual and physical aggression, so they plead to the gods to alleviate some of their burden. The gods resolve to create an equal for Gilgamesh to tame him and keep him in line. This equal, Enkidu, has an immediate impact on Gilgamesh. When they first...
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...Diasporic Cross-Currents in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk HEIKE HÄRTING N HIS REVIEW of Anil’s Ghost, Todd Hoffmann describes Michael Ondaatje’s novel as a “mystery of identity” (449). Similarly, Aritha van Herk identifies “fear, unpredictability, secrecy, [and] loss” (44) as the central features of the novel and its female protagonist. Anil’s Ghost, van Herk argues, presents its readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated...
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...household management where the prevalence of order over Chaos is of utmost importance. In this paper, using the Odyssey as a case study, I will examine the thematic importance of the decisions taken by a hero in accordance to or defiance of self control and pietas and the consequences they lead to. These expectations are clearly marked out for the reader who waits in anticipation to garner the fate of the hero. I will analyse the themes of self control and pietas or duty in the Odyssey and discuss their special significance in this epic. I will then briefly talk about the Hindu concept of duty or Dharma with reference to the Ramayana. I however do not intend to use the concept of monomyth coined by Joseph Campbell also referred to as the hero's journey(which is a basic pattern that its proponents argue is found in many narratives from around the world.) in comparing these epics. The example of the Ramayana will only serve my purpose of highlighting the theme of duty in mythologies across the world. Lastly, I will conclude with the importance of inspecting these themes because of their significance to the plotline. Georg Wissowa notes that pietas was meant by the Romans as "the conduct of the man who performed all his duties towards the deity and his fellow human beings fully and in every respect."Around the year 70 BC, Cicero defined pietas as the virtue "which admonishes us to do our duty to our country or our parents or other blood relations. 1 Essentially a Roman concept ,I...
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...Gatsby’s Archetypal Quest for Daisy, the Monetary Prize In The Great Gatsby, the characterizations of Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, particularly in the flashback of when they first met in Chapter VIII, expose the absence of love that lies beneath the glitz and glamour of wealthy living. When seen through an archetypal lens, Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy can be seen as an Archetypal quest where the “golden girl” is a treasure, rather than a love interest (Fitzgerald, 120) (Delahoyde, 1). To Jay Gatsby, Daisy is materialistically the ultimate peak of wealth to be obtained, a metaphor best illustrated in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s choice of descriptive words that portray her in the same way that money might be defined. Daisy is a princess “high in a white palace the king’s daughter”, beautiful and comfortably assured a life of ease due to her wealthy place in society (Fitzgerald, 120). In this novel she is more a material, a monetary symbol, than a person, and this best proved in Chapter VIII (Delahoyde, 1). In a flashback of Gatsby’s to when he first knew and loved Daisy, his descriptions paint a picture of her “gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor” (Fitzgerald, 150). In this glowing portrayal that showcases Daisy’s beauty and power, (both things that she was born with, that she did not earn) her appearance and social class is all that is focused on, she is merely an outward image. From the point of view of a man that supposedly loves her, there...
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...CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of The Study Every individual has problems in their life. The problem that appears is complex. Most of them related to human psychological condition. One of the basic problems of individual is feeling inferiority. This emerges as the result of psychological and social weakness. Inferiority feeling also arises for imperfection in doing something. Those feelings include subjective feeling, which is experienced by people because of their social disabilities. Thus, human beings try to compensate for their inferiority feeling by striving to overcome their feeling. Inferiority feeling influences human being life style. In other words, inferiority determines life style involving how people attempt to defeat their weakness. Commonly, individual applies their inferiority in social life. However, they tend to be motivated to overcome feeling of inferiority by building relationship with others to get their life’s goal. Sometimes, the goal of life will become difficult thing to be reached since there are many problems in human life. The problems in human life cannot be separated from thinking, feeling, and acting. Those are actually bringing up influence for the literary work. Therefore, literature closely related to psychology in human being including experiences facing the life. A work of literature is created not only to entertain but also to convey values and meanings to human life which can be discovered in the problem...
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...national identity. In Sammo Hung’s Wong Fei Hung Ji Saam (West Territory Mighty Lion/Once upon a Time in China and America, 1997), Master Huang Fei-hong (Jet Li Linjie) travels to the Wild West to visit an American branch of the Po Chi Lam Clinic set up by his student Sol. During the journey, he bangs his head against a rock in a turbulent stream and loses his memory. He is rescued by a friendly tribe of Indians. Moments before we see Huang again, an Indian emerges from a tepee proudly announcing the birth of a child. When Huang recovers, he stumbles around in the Indian camp wearing an Indian costume, and his loose unbraided hair is flowing like an Indian’s. After using his martial arts prowess to defeat a hostile Indian, who ironically mouths racist American platitudes against the outsider—”His clothing is different, his skin color is different, his speech is different”—Huang is adopted into the tribe and given the name “Yellow.” Before this, he attempts to remember events of the recent past. But his vague recollections reveal images reproducing culturally blurred boundaries paralleling his sense of ethnic and geographic displacement. During the recent past of his stagecoach journey through America, Aunt Yee/Thirteenth Aunt/Shishanyi (Rosamund Kwan Chi-lam) had taught him English while Seven/Club Foot (Xong Xin-xin) watched Huang. Club Foot then expresses his yearning for a traditional bowl of Chinese rice...
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...For other uses, see Fiction (disambiguation). An illustration from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, depicting the fictional protagonist, Alice, playing afantastical game of croquet. Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical, cinematic or musical work. Fiction contrasts with non-fiction, which deals exclusively with factual (or, at least, assumed factual) events, descriptions, observations, etc. (e.g.,biographies, histories). Contents [hide] * 1 Types of fiction * 1.1 Realistic fiction * 1.2 Non-realistic fiction * 1.3 Semi-Fiction * 2 Elements of fiction * 2.1 Plot * 2.2 Exposition * 2.3 Foreshadowing * 2.4 Rising action * 2.5 Climax * 2.6 Falling action * 2.7 Resolution * 2.8 Conflict * 2.8.1 Types of conflict * 2.8.1.1 Person vs. self * 2.8.1.2 Person vs. person * 2.8.1.3 Person vs. society * 2.8.1.4 Person vs. nature * 2.8.1.5 Person vs. supernatural * 2.8.1.6 Person vs. machine/technology * 2.9 Character * 2.10 Methods of developing characters * 2.11 Symbolism * 2.12 Metaphor * 3 Types of plots * 3.1 Chronological order * 3.2 Flashback * 3.3 Setting...
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...Elizabeth Cady Stanton Biography: Where did Elizabeth Cady Stanton grow up? Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown, New York on November 12, 1815. She had 10 brothers and sisters, however, many of them died during childhood. Only Elizabeth and four of her sisters lived well into adulthood. Her last brother, Eleazar, died when he was 20 years old leaving her mother depressed and her father wishing that Elizabeth was a boy. Elizabeth (sitting) with Susan B. Anthony Not Fair for Women Growing up Elizabeth was exposed to the law through her father Daniel. He was a lawyer who also served as a judge and a U.S. Congressman. She learned that the law was not the same for men and women. She learned that only men could vote and that women had few rights under the law. She didn't think this was fair. She thought she was as good as any boy and should be given the same opportunities. Going to School When Elizabeth reached school age she wanted to go to school to learn. Not many women went to school in those days, but her father agreed to send her to school. At school Elizabeth was an excellent student. She won awards and proved that she could do as well or better than most of the boys. After high school, Elizabeth wanted to go to college. She quickly learned that girls were not allowed into the major universities. She ended up going to a college for girls where she was able to continue her studies. Abolitionist and Human Rights Elizabeth began to believe...
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...The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering King Hamlet, Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then succeeding to the throne and taking as his wife Gertrude, the old king's widow and Prince Hamlet's mother. The play vividly portrays both true and feigned madness – from overwhelming grief to seething rage – and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others." The play was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime It has inspired writers from Goethe and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella". Shakespeare based Hamlet on the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. He may also have drawn on or perhaps written an earlier Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet. He almost certainly created the title role for Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time. In the 400 years since, the role has been performed by highly acclaimed actors and actresses from each successive age. Three...
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